Obama agenda: Gotta have that swing

“President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation's dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side,” USA Today writes. “In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points. The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.”

GOP 12 notes that New Mexico, Michigan, and Wisconsin don’t look like swing states at all and thereby skew the poll. And states like Arizona, Indiana, and Missouri should be included, since they were closer in 2008, but lean GOP. Still, Romney and the GOP need to expand the playing field and places like Wisconsin are places they hope to play.

60 Minutes highlights the promises Obama made as a candidate on space and the impact cuts to the space program have had on Brevard County, Florida. Obama said on Aug. 2, 2008: “I'm gonna ensure that our space program doesn't suffer when the shuttle goes out of service by making sure that all those who work in the space industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the shuttle is retired because we can't afford to lose their expertise.”

“A major donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama's re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter,” AP reports. “The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama's re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she's accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state -- a charge her husband denies.”